If it’s not at the very least
The Most, or the Very best,
It’s trash, man, in America --
Be it a kitchen knife, a trophy wife
Or the best years of your miserable life.
Further and more,
The best is not yet to come
Because tomorrow your Best will be bested;
It’s a Better-than-Best-eat-Best world out there, boy
And though Better-than-anything, admittedly,
Is better than just Best,
It’s not nearly as good as Stupendous.
That, ma boy, is not even the Worst of it
The worst is the opposite of Good,
Which nowadays is not Bad,
But Not bad, or Pretty good,
Two consecutive death sentences, in America --

Where have Fine and Decent and Lovely gone?
What gulag have Good-job or Nicely-done
Been exiled to?
And what inflationary forces can manage to bloat
A simple adjective like Excellent into
The Ultimate Life-changing Epoch-making halter top,
Or the Mouth-watering Drop-dead-gorgeous
Chicken nugget?

As you sip your Wicked awesome Once-in-a-life
To-die-for Definitive Latté
You are not merely annoyed but must detest
And abhor that abominable disgusting stroller-Nazi
Who took up three parking spots with her monster
SUV-size Humvee of a stroller next to you,
And that was nothing but the opening credits for
The rest of this absolutely horrific worst day
Of your life -   Ever -   Here on earth
Or in the hereafter.

You think global warming will do us in,
Or Al-Qaeda or running out of oil?
That’s small change, kiddo,
Compared with the real apocalypse
Of running out of superlatives
When the final showdown,
Not between Good and Evil,
But between the last worst Worst
And the last best Best left standing
Will signal the end of words
And our return to grunts and sign language.

That’s all I have to say.

                                    ***

And casually let it go

(What use to you a breath of mine?)

While I, breath-less, like a greedy collector

Snared your luminous essence

And lovingly pinned it

To the dark velvet of my mind --

A dead memory of a living moment

In an empty field

Each early morning

Sits without stirring an old recliner

Upon which reclines an old man

Abandoned

To his wander-lust of thoughts

Unchecked by luggage

Or spacetime travel restrictions

With hollow eyes fixed on

Ca - llis - to

And the lids of his blind eyes

Slowly lift as if in astonishment

At the sun’s unexpected warmth

That slowly wipes the thoughts dry

And returns them

To the same old recliner

In the same old field

That is no longer empty

Callisto --

A distant celestial nymph,

An old flame cooled in Jupiter’s orbit.

Callisto --

The sweet tingling of her name

Still excites his palate

In the end you sleep alone

Notwithstanding who you sleep with

And see yourself alone

Notwithstanding who you’re seeing

In the end you lie alone,

In state, or in the gutter,

Not withstanding all the tears

That shared your bed

And the ones now standing

All around it.

A poem --

Vast silence broken up by words

The blankness of a page interrupted

By small black letters

Like primordial swirls of energy

That curve a vast and empty space

Around them

To give shape to their light

And in return give meaning

To the void’s own darkness.